BOWLING -- PETRAGLIA OPEN

BOWLING -- PETRAGLIA OPEN; Williams's Thing: Pins, Not Popularity

By RON DICKER

Published: April 22, 1999

Walter Ray Williams Jr., the best professional bowler of his era, will never win a popularity contest. A fellow pro and friend, Randy Pedersen, concedes that Williams can be abrasive and that bowling might benefit by having a more personable star at the top.

There's a lot of envious folks out there who would obviously like to have the same success that he has, Pedersen said. I think that Walter is a genuine, good person. He's just a different guy. You either like him or you don't.

Williams said he has rubbed competitors the wrong way by tattling on them for unsportsmanlike conduct, by his unflinching opinions when he was president of the Professional Bowlers Association, and by his ramrod-straight life style (one beer in his life, never a cigarette).

But even Williams's critics cannot argue about his status as the P.B.A. Tour's No.1-ranked bowler for 79 tournaments running. The pecking order is apparent even before one enters Carolier Lanes in North Brunswick, N.J., the site of this week's Johnny Petraglia Open.

In the parking lot, a ghetto of motor homes driven by some of the tour's players has sprung up, but one stands out. It is a motor mansion, really, at 43 feet long. Williams bought the $200,000 rig, outfitted with wood paneling and a master bedroom, after some encouragement from his wife, Paige Pennington, who often travels with him.

Williams has won three straight player-of-the-year awards to bring his total to five, one behind Earl Anthony's record. Williams is the sport's career earnings leader at $2,315,753 and has won 29 tournaments, trailing only Mark Roth (34) and Anthony (41).

Surpassing the victory total of Anthony, whom Williams considers the greatest bowler ever, would be the crowning achievement in a career he began only because there was no money to be made pitching horseshoes. Williams won the world junior horseshoe championship at age 11.

Williams, who grew up in California with three older sisters and three younger brothers, later devoted more attention to bowling, competing on Saturday mornings, then watching the pros on television in the afternoon.

He bowled about 20 games a week through college at Cal Poly-Pomona, where he earned a physics degree before joining the tour full time.

Anthony won his 41st title at age 45. Williams, a 6-foot-2-inch, 180-pound right-hander who now makes his home in Ocala, Fla., is 39. He suspects he may have five or six more good years.

Knowing how competitive I am, and when I don't bowl well how unhappy I am about that, I don't think I would like to be on tour if I wasn't doing well, he said.

Anthony, reached by phone at his home in Cornelius, Ore., said, With his ability, he could win 50 times.

Yesterday at the Petraglia, which Williams won in 1996 and 1997, he bowled high games of 290 and 279 for the first-round lead.

Next week, the tour moves to Coram Country Lanes on Long Island for preliminaries, then to Bryant Park in Manhattan for the tour's first outdoor televised finals. RON DICKER